An interdisciplinary project between the Institute of Theory, the Institute for Performing Arts & Film and the Swiss Epilepsy Center.
Avatars, «artificial» people or graphics-based placeholders for an actual being are becoming increasingly specific and personal and more like designs in their own right. They seem to be replacing people's physical bodies and allow them to appear as – or take the form of – a design they have chosen themselves. Whereas the first generation of avatars were mainly able to operate in artificial worlds, the next generation will be able to interact with the real world, form relationships, and therefore create the kind of impact we have not seen before. As such, avatars are starting to behave more like actors. But are the processes involved actually the same? Where are the differences? What new insights does this development give us into the relationship between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us – and into how we recognise ourselves in something «other»? Is there any connection with the concept of the «mask», and can what we know about acting help describe this? Do our brains ultimately process the emotional behaviour of avatars in the same way as that of real people?
The «Actor and Avatar» project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) tackles this and other questions on an interdisciplinary basis combining philosophy, research into acting, and neurology, drawing on the specific expertise and methods associated with the respective disciplines. It is based on a collaboration between two institutes at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), namely the Institute for Theory (ith) and the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film (IPF), as well as the Schweizerische Epilepsie-Klinik Zurich (Swiss Epilepsy Clinic – EPI Clinic). The philosophical questions are: What is the other? How do we perceive its face? What does a face or a mask mean? How do we form relationships with other people, things, other beings, and virtual people? These questions, which cover both practical aspects of acting and artistic/scientific considerations, are underpinned by experiments involving various moods and emotions – how these take expression in facial features and how they can be transferred to virtual figures such as avatars. What we are talking about here is the reflexive experience of encountering our own face or that of others: an actor mimics a sensation, sees themselves in the form of an avatar, and controls both their own and its expression at the same time. The resulting images of people and avatars will provide the basis in turn for neuroscientific studies at the EPI Clinic. Here – if all goes well – it is hoped that brain scans using fMRI and EEG techniques will show up variations in how the face of a person and that of an artificial figure/avatar are perceived, making it possible for us to draw conclusions from their differences and apply these in various ways.